Why Medical Tests Don’t Fix Health Anxiety (And What Actually Does) with Ken Goodman | Ep. 493

In this episode, I sit down with health anxiety expert Ken Goodman to explore why normal medical tests often don’t bring lasting relief, how health anxiety and somatic symptom disorder keep us stuck, and the practical strategies that can help us finally break free from the cycle of fear.

In this episode, I’ll share:

• Why reassurance from medical tests often fades quickly, and what actually helps create lasting relief.
• The difference between health anxiety and somatic symptom disorder, and why understanding both can change the way you approach recovery.
• How anxiety can amplify real physical sensations, creating a cycle that keeps fear and symptoms alive.
• Practical tools to help you respond differently to scary symptoms, uncertainty, and the urge to Google, check, or seek reassurance.
• How to navigate doctor’s appointments, medical tests, and health concerns without feeding the anxiety cycle.
• Why recovery isn’t about eliminating every sensation, but about changing your relationship with uncertainty so you can get back to living your life.

Why Normal Test Results Don’t End Health Anxiety (And What Actually Does) 

Have you ever walked out of a doctor’s office with the words, “Everything looks normal,” echoing in your mind… only to find yourself feeling relieved for a few hours before the fear returned?

Maybe the thought sounded like:

What if they missed something?

What if it’s too early to detect?

What if I need just one more opinion?

If this feels familiar, I want you to know something important: you’re not imagining your experience. The symptoms you’re feeling are real. The chest tightness. The headaches. The dizziness. The racing heart. The stomach discomfort. They’re all real.

But what many people aren’t told is that normal medical tests don’t always end the cycle of fear, because the problem isn’t necessarily what the test is designed to find.

Let’s talk about why.

When the Tests Keep Coming Back Normal

Medical tests are incredibly valuable. They help identify physical diseases and conditions that need treatment.

But if you’ve had appropriate medical evaluations and your providers have ruled out serious illness, yet your anxiety continues to convince you that something catastrophic is still hiding beneath the surface, you may not be dealing with a medical condition at all.

You may be dealing with health anxiety, somatic symptom disorder, or a combination of both.

These are incredibly common, and incredibly misunderstood.

Health Anxiety and Somatic Symptom Disorder: What’s the Difference?

These two conditions overlap frequently, and they often look very similar from the outside.

Health Anxiety

Health anxiety (sometimes called Illness Anxiety Disorder) centers around the fear that you have, or will develop, a serious illness.

Your mind constantly scans for evidence that something is wrong, and even minor physical sensations can quickly become signs of catastrophe.

A headache becomes a brain tumor.

A skipped heartbeat becomes heart disease.

A stomach ache becomes cancer.

The fear isn’t really the symptom itself. It’s what you believe the symptom means.

Somatic Symptom Disorder

Somatic symptom disorder also involves real physical symptoms.

The difference is that the focus often stays on the symptom itself.

The discomfort becomes all-consuming.

Questions like these take over:

• Why won’t this go away?
• Why is this happening?
• Will it ever get better?
• Is this going to ruin my life?

Whether it’s burning mouth, dizziness, chronic pain, stomach issues, or another unexplained sensation, the symptom becomes the center of your attention.

The important thing to know is this:

The symptoms are real. The suffering is real.

But the constant fear and attention often make both conditions much worse.

The Body Is Noisy

One of my favorite ideas from this conversation is something my guest, Ken Goodman, says often:

The body is noisy.

As humans, we experience countless sensations every single day.

Headaches.

Muscle twitches.

Digestive changes.

Random aches.

Changes in heart rate.

Most people notice these sensations and move on.

But when you have health anxiety, your brain treats every sensation like an emergency.

Instead of thinking, “That’s interesting,” your brain says:

“What is that?”

“Should I Google it?”

“Should I check it again?”

“Should I make a doctor’s appointment?”

“What if this is the beginning of something terrible?”

The body hasn’t necessarily changed.

Your relationship to the sensation has.

Why Googling Never Gives You Peace

If you’ve ever fallen into a Google rabbit hole (or asked ChatGPT for medical advice), you already know how this story ends.

You search one symptom.

You discover ten possible illnesses.

Your anxiety skyrockets.

Then your body becomes even more activated.

Ironically, anxiety itself creates many physical symptoms:

• Racing heart
• Dizziness
• Tingling
• Muscle tension
• Stomach problems
• Headaches
• Chest tightness

Now your anxiety has even more “evidence” that something is wrong.

The cycle feeds itself.

Attention Makes Anxiety Grow

Think of your attention like watering a garden.

Whatever you consistently water grows.

When you repeatedly:

• Check your body
• Research symptoms
• Ask for reassurance
• Analyze sensations
• Scan for changes

you’re giving anxiety exactly what it wants, your time, energy, and attention.

That doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.

It means your anxious brain is trying to protect you.

Unfortunately, it’s protecting you in a way that keeps the fear alive.

Acceptance Isn’t Giving Up

This is one of the hardest concepts for people with health anxiety.

Acceptance does not mean pretending nothing is happening.

It does not mean ignoring medical problems.

It means allowing uncertainty to exist without constantly trying to eliminate it.

For many people, the symptom itself becomes less distressing once they stop fighting it.

Sometimes the symptom even fades over time.

And even when it doesn’t disappear completely, suffering often decreases dramatically because the fear surrounding it changes.

“What If I’m Missing Something Serious?”

This is usually the biggest fear.

People often ask me:

“What if I use these anxiety skills and it turns out I actually have something medically wrong?”

That’s an understandable question.

The answer isn’t to ignore your health.

It’s to learn to recognize patterns.

If you’ve spent years cycling through different catastrophic fears, repeatedly seeking reassurance, and repeatedly receiving normal medical evaluations, it’s worth asking yourself:

What do I know for certain?

You may not know whether every symptom is harmless.

But you may know that you struggle with health anxiety.

Treat what you know you have first.

If symptoms persist, significantly worsen, or new medically concerning symptoms develop, follow up with your healthcare provider.

Those two things can exist together.

Finding Balance With Medical Care

One challenge with health anxiety is that people often swing between two extremes.

Some visit doctors repeatedly, searching for certainty.

Others avoid doctors altogether because they’re afraid of what they might hear.

Neither extreme is particularly helpful.

Instead, aim for balance.

Attend routine medical appointments.

Have a trusted primary care physician.

Allow your doctor to do their job.

Accept that medicine, like life, cannot offer 100% certainty.

The Difference Between Assurance and Reassurance

This distinction matters.

Receiving medical reassurance after an appropriate evaluation isn’t the problem.

The problem is when reassurance becomes a compulsion.

When you need to:

• Ask the same question repeatedly.
• Contact the doctor again.
• Search online “just one more time.”
• Ask your partner if they think you’re okay.
• Keep checking until the anxiety temporarily settles.

That temporary relief is exactly what keeps the cycle going.

Recovery Is Absolutely Possible

One of my favorite takeaways from this conversation is that health anxiety is highly treatable.

With the right evidence-based treatment, particularly approaches grounded in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and mindfulness, people can dramatically reduce both their anxiety and their suffering.

Recovery doesn’t mean never noticing another physical sensation.

It means learning that you don’t have to believe every scary story your anxious brain tells you.

Your body will always be imperfect.

It will always make noise.

But you don’t have to spend your life listening for danger.

Sometimes the greatest healing begins not when we finally eliminate uncertainty, but when we stop demanding certainty before we’re willing to live.

If today’s conversation resonated with you, I encourage you to listen to the full podcast episode, where Ken Goodman and I explore practical strategies for breaking the cycle of health anxiety, navigating medical appointments with confidence, and building a healthier relationship with your body. Recovery is possible, and you don’t have to stay stuck in the endless search for certainty.

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Transcription: Why Medical Tests Don’t Fix Health Anxiety (And What Actually Does) with Ken Goodman

Kimberley: You got the results back and everything is normal, and you waited for the relief to come, but it didn’t. Maybe you felt better for a few hours, maybe even a day, and then the thought crept back

 

right one? What if normal results just meant that you haven’t found it yet? And so you go back, or you Googled it, or you checked your body again, looking for that thing that must be there because

 

something has to explain this feeling that you have and why you feel this way. And here’s the part that makes it even harder. The symptoms are real. The chest tightness is real. The headaches are real. The dizziness, the racing heart

 

are real. You’re not imagining them, and you’re not making them up. And anyone who’s ever implied that you are has done you a serious disservice. But here is what nobody told you when they handed you those test results. The test is never going to fix you, not because something is wrong with the test, but because medical

 

tests are designed to find physical disease. And what you’re dealing with is not a disease that shows up on a scan. It’s something that lives in the relationship between your brain, your body, and the meaning you are making

 

And there are actually two conditions that explain what it can look like. Two conditions that are related, they often overlap, and they’re both wildly underdiagnosed. And most people have

 

First is health anxiety, sometimes called illness anxiety disorder, and the second is somatic symptom disorder. This is where real, genuine physical symptoms are accompanied by disproportionate

 

and persistent anxiety, thoughts, and behaviors around those symptoms in a way that They are not the same thing, and understanding which one you’re actually dealing with or whether both are in the picture, that matters enormously on what treatment can look like and why. Now, Ken Goodman has been on the show before and is a therapist who specializes in health anxiety and is the author of The Health Anxiety Toolkit and Video Toolkit.

 

Ken has spent his career sitting with people who have been exactly where you are, exhausted from all the testing, the Googling, the reassurance that never sticks, the symptoms that no one can explain, and helping them finally understand what’s actually happening and what actually helps. Today, we’re getting to all of it, why the tests will never be enough, what health anxiety and somatic symptom disorder actually are, and how to tell them apart.

 

Ken, welcome to the show. 

 

So thank you so much for being here, Ken. I am so excited to have this conversation. It has been a conversation and a question that I get asked all the time. So let’s first get into the clinical side of what’s going on here, really talking about the human cost. What does it look like or feel like living in this cycle when a person is stuck in this situation?

 

Ken: Well, first of all, thank you for having me again on your podcast. I really appreciate being a guest. Boy, you know, when you have health anxiety, somatic symptom disorder, it’s actually called illness anxiety is the official title, it is debilitating because the cycle is one thought, one symptom. That seems to go away, but it’s followed up by another one.

 

The body’s very noisy, so it’s constantly triggering you because that’s the way the body works. We’re not perfect, and so any time there’s a physical sensation, something odd, something unusual, something different, your mind tends to drift to the worst-case scenario, and then you perseverate on it, dwell on it.

 

You focus on it. You Google, or nowadays ChatGPT- … and you start learning about diseases you didn’t even know about, and then you get super anxious, and oftentimes the more anxious you feel, the worse the symptom gets. 

 

Kimberley: Yes. 

 

Ken: It’s a horrible cycle, and what you’re feeling is real. The symptoms that you’re feeling are real.

 

The interpretation, however, is wrong. 

 

Kimberley: That’s a hard cycle to be stuck in, though. Very. Especially, I’ve had a lot of health anxiety clients say, like, “If I was afraid of airplanes, I could at least avoid airplanes, but I can’t avoid my body. It’s walking… I’m walking around in my exposure all day long- Oh, yeah

 

and it’s exhausting.” And so let’s get straight to sort of this main 

 

Ken: concept. Let me say one other, let me say one other thing- Sure … because you’re right. You could avoid going on an airplane. You could avoid going on elevators. If you’re afraid of clowns, don’t go to the circus. 

 

Kimberley: Yes. 

 

Ken: But you can’t avoid this, because not only is the body noisy, but so is the world.

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: You’re gonna drive by a hospital. You’re gonna see a pink ribbon that represents breast cancer. You know, you’re gonna hear a story from a coworker who had a cousin who just got diagnosed with brain cancer. 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: There’s no way to avoid it. 

 

Kimberley: No. 

 

Ken: And it’s unpredictable. 

 

Kimberley: And let alone, if you log on to Facebook and you get into some Facebook group, before you know it, you’re learning about some terrible, catastrophic thing and you can’t backpedal from there.

 

You, you can’t un-know what you just read. Yeah. So it, it- 

 

Ken: GoFundMe. GoFundMe, you know, for- Yes. Yes … for somebody who’s diagnosed with something fatal, yeah. 

 

Kimberley: Exactly. Exactly. So again, I really want you guys to understand, who are listening, most people watching this and listening have never heard of the term somatic symptom disorder.

 

Um, and some of them have been in the mental health system for years. Can you walk us through the difference between what is health anxiety versus what is somatic symptom disorder? 

 

Ken: You know, it’s very similar, and people will often have elements of both, and in my book, I talk a little bit about somatic symptom disorder and health anxiety.

 

But I really- Treat them as one. But somatic symptom disorder is a preoccupation with a physical symptom. You may not think that you’re gonna die from it. You’re not worried about the end result. You’re just preoccupied with that physical symptom. 

 

Kimberley: And 

 

Ken: but most of the time people have a little bit of both.

 

Like, they’re preoccupied with the symptom and they’re worried. They may not be worried they’re gonna die from it, but how long is this gonna last? Is it gonna get worse? Why is this happening? 

 

Kimberley: And what about illness anxiety? Like, how might somebody differentiate in the day-to-day what is what? Again, like, I’ve heard so many patients and students say to go to the doctor to get the tests, and the doctor says, “This is just your anxiety,” can feel so demoralizing and so- 

 

Ken: Yeah

 

Kimberley: you know, embarrassing or shaming or j- they feel judged. And they kind of feel lost ’cause they’re like, “Well, what do I do?” How might they be able to differentiate what is what? Like you said, you think they’re very similar, but can you, can you sort of explain what they might look like in, in comparison? 

 

Ken: To be honest with you, I want tr- the layperson doesn’t need to know the exact definition between what is somatic symptom disorder and what is health anxiety.

 

It doesn’t really matter that much. You’re gonna treat them both the same. In both situations, it’s a preoccupation with that physical symptom, and the more you’re preoccupied with those physical symptoms, the worse it’s going to get. The physical symptom is real. Like, whatever you’re experiencing, you’re actually experiencing it, but the more you focus on it, the more engrossed you become with it, whether that’s behavioral or mental preoccupation, the longer it’s gonna last- Mm

 

and the worse it’s gonna feel. Like, I literally got, um, I just spoke to someone two days ago, and when I met her, she had joined my health anxiety group. And she’s been having health anxiety since she was 14, and now she was 40 when she joined the group. And she joined the group because she was having what was called burning mouth.

 

Extreme pain in her tongue, chronic, all day, every day. And she went to multiple doctors, all different kinds of doctors. None of them had answers, and so she came to me and, and thought, “Well, maybe this is health anxiety.” So we talked about radical acceptance, accepting that you have burning tongue, and then learning that it’s not dangerous and to not be afraid of it because the more fearful you are of the symptom and the more preoccupied you are with it and trying to change it and make it go away, the longer it’s gonna last.

 

Kimberley: Mm. 

 

Ken: So for three years she was seeking medical interventions- Very anxious, very fearful. In the third year after she was in my class, she decided to try this mind-body approach where she started looking at the idea that, okay, maybe it’s my mind that’s creating this. And sure enough, now I didn’t know this because the class had ended and she was still having burning tongue, but she said it took about a year, an entire year, for it to go away.

 

So she was using this approach, this acceptance, not being afraid of it, for an entire year. It slowly went away, and she said now she doesn’t consider herself having burning mouth because it’s so small. Sometimes she- most of the time she doesn’t feel it. Most of the time it’s like a .5, but it took a whole year.

 

There was no medicine involved, no surgery, nothing. 

 

Kimberley: No tests. 

 

Ken: No tests. It just went away when she stopped being afraid of it, stopped caring about it. Just accepting it. 

 

Kimberley: Mm. 

 

Mm. 

 

Ken: But it didn’t happen overnight. It takes time- 

 

Kimberley: It does … 

 

Ken: for the body to quiet. 

 

Kimberley: Yes. It takes 

 

Ken: time. 

 

Kimberley: It reminds me a conversation I had with Steven Hayes, where he talked about how he was diagnosed with severe tinnitus, or in Australia we say tinnitus.

 

And he said he would spend all this time, like, resisting it, resisting it, resisting it, until he practices i- this idea of accepting a sensation, not catastrophizing it, not trying to, you know, figure out how to get it to go away or avoid it, but just letting it be there. And he’s like, “I still have tinnitus.

 

It just doesn’t bother me anymore.” 

 

Ken: Mm-hmm. 

 

Kimberley: Um, and so I think it’s, even for folks who continue to have a sensation, even if it doesn’t go away, their suffering about it goes down. 

 

Ken: Yes. And in my book, I have a, I have a… It’s called The Health Anxiety Handbook and Video Toolkit because there’s all these QR codes that link to videos, and one of the videos is my niece, who’s now 29, but she…

 

It was a surgical procedure to fix something on her eye, and the surgery went bad, and she ended up having double vision. So everything she saw was double vision. And searching for medical, other medical ways to correct that, nothing happened. I mean, they patched her eye. Just, it never went away. But she adjusted to it.

 

So even though she still has double vision, because it’s a medical thing, it’s not psychological, it was medical, she was still able to adjust to it. So she was, she’s able to drive. She’s able to do everything anyone else could do, but she had to at first accept the fact that she had double vision. So even if something is medical, you can still adjust to it.

 

The good news about these psychological disorders is that the more you accept them, the more they go away. Mm. The more you’re… The less fearful you are of them, and the less you focus on them, the more they go away, to the point where they can go away completely. 

 

Kimberley: So let’s talk about that, because I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck, is they have physical symptoms.

 

They have headaches. They have stomach aches. They have rashes. They have, like, all of these that are under the umbrella of symptoms of anxiety, but also could be symptoms of cancer, if they’ve Googled it, right? Yeah. Or now we have the problem of people ChatGPT-ing Their medical advice, which is a whole episode in and of itself, but they’re actually experiencing this, and they’re stuck with this moment of do I practice what Ken and Kimberly are saying by accepting it?

 

And but the side effect of that, the risk of that, is they’re going to have an intrusive thought that what if I’m being irresponsible? What if this is the first symptom of cancer, and I use the skills, and that is what causes me to have some catastrophic… Like, I’ve never had a client who hasn’t had that fear, that what if using these skills impacts me from getting the care, medical care I need?

 

What is your approach? What would you suggest, whether they have somatic symptom disorder or health anxiety, illness anxiety? What would you say to them in that circumstance? 

 

Ken: So I think the first thing is you have to learn about what is actually health anxiety. So in the book, I describe it, and if you see a pattern of health anxiety, like if you’ve had it for years and you see that you’ve had one episode after another of imagining catastrophic fatal illnesses, and they haven’t come to pass, and there is a pattern there, a persistent pattern of worrying about fatal diseases, exaggerating, um, symptoms, then you know you have health anxiety, right?

 

So you can say, “Okay, I have health anxiety. That’s the one thing I know I have. I haven’t been diagnosed with cancer. I haven’t been diagnosed with ALS. I haven’t been diagnosed with heart ailments, but I know I have health anxiety. I have to treat that first because I know I have that.” So if you treat the health anxiety first, even though it could be cancer or something else, that’s the best way to go.

 

So first and foremost, I’m gonna treat the health anxiety. If then the symptoms persist or they get worse, okay, now I’ll go to the doctor. 

 

Kimberley: Mm-hmm. 

 

Ken: But I have to treat what I know I have first. 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. You answered almost the question I was just gonna ask, which is when to know to go to the doctor. 

 

Ken: Oftentimes, people with health anxiety will fall into one of two camps, and usually they fluctuate.

 

Either they go to the doctor too often or they avoid the doctor completely. 

 

Kimberley: Yes. 

 

Ken: And oftentimes they will flip-flop. So… And you have health anxiety, and you seem to want to go to the doctor, uh, immediately. There is an urgent need to know. So whenever there’s something uncertain, you wanna know now. I need to know quickly.

 

I need to figure this out, so you make a doctor’s appointment prematurely instead of just waiting because most symptoms will just fix on their own. They’ll- most symptoms will just go away on their own. You don’t have to do anything, and if you look back over your history and you think of all the symptoms you’ve ever had, how many of them actually needed medicine to go away?

 

Most of the time these symptoms just go away on their own, so if you give it a little bit of time… I talk in my book about the three-week rule, and I also talk about exceptions to the three-week rule, but it’s like let me just kind of wait three weeks. If the symptoms are going away, great. If they’re getting worse, all right, I’ll make an appointment and go to the doctor.

 

But let’s just sort of wait. I don’t need to know now

 

Kimberley: Now, as you know, I have a private practice. I have six amazing therapists in Calabasas, California. However, we do not take insurance. Now, if you are looking for insurance-covered OCD or BFRB treatment, I wanna let you know about NOCD. NOCD provides face-to-face live video sessions with specialized licensed OCD therapists.

 

Now, their therapists use exposure and response prevention. We know this is the gold standard for OCD, so you can be absolutely confirmed that you’re in the right place there, and they have a clinically proven app that helps you stay connected to your therapist and others who have OCD between sessions, so you’ll always feel supported.

 

Now, the cool thing is NOCD is available in all 50 US states and even internationally, and they accept most insurance plans, making it affordable and accessible. We love that. Now, if you think you might have OCD or you’re struggling to manage your symptoms, you can book a free call. Just click the link in the show notes at nocd.com.

 

I am honored to partner with NOCD. I want to remind you that recovery is possible. Please do not forget that. Now, big hugs, and let’s get back to the show 

 

Ken: Now that might be different for heart, but everything else I can just wait. You can just wait- Yeah … and see what happens. 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. And I think that that’s the interesting part, and I think you mentioned this earlier, is we do- w- if you have health anxiety, you do tend to have extreme expectations on your body to not have symptoms.

 

Like, I find that that’s so much a part of the problem. Like, they’ll be like, “But I have a headache.” And I’m like, “Yeah, humans get headaches.” And they’re like, “But why?” And I’m like, “No, just because. Like, humans just get them. Like, it’s a part of being a human.” But I think that when there’s health anxiety, every symptom feels like the beginning of a catastrophe.

 

Ken: Mm-hmm. Yeah, my working title for my book was The Noisy Body and the Fearful Mind. Um, because the body’s just noisy. Yes. I mean, don’t expect your body to be perfect. I mean- Right … it’s not perfect. It does all sorts of weird things all the time. 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: It’s just that when you have health anxiety, you tend to focus on it, whereas the average person will notice it, and they’ll just move on to something else.

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: But when you have health anxiety, you immediately… it, it grabs your attention. What is that? Okay, now there’s a need to know. So now you gotta look at it. You gotta examine it. You gotta go online and do research. You gotta take pictures of it. You gotta ask for reassurance. So now the more you focus on it, the worse it’s gonna get.

 

Kimberley: Mm. 

 

Ken: The whole idea is to notice it, remind yourself, “I have health anxiety. Let’s move on.” 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: And not focus on… Anytime you give some energy to something, time to something, it’s gonna grow. Like imagine you wanna grow a vegetable garden. So you think to yourself, “All right, I don’t know how to vote- grow a vegetable garden.

 

I’m gonna go on YouTube, and I’m gonna learn how to grow a vegetable garden.” You spend hours on that, and then you go to Home Depot, and you ask, you know, for advice, and you buy all the equipment. You come home, and you pl- you know, you till the soil, and you nurture the soil, and you pull the weeds, and you build a contraption so the rodents can’t get in there.

 

And what’s gonna happen in a few months? You’re gonna grow vegetables. But if you take the seeds and just throw them on the ground, nothing’s gonna happen. 

 

Kimberley: Right. 

 

Ken: The more energy and time, the more it grows, whether it’s vegetables or your thoughts. 

 

Kimberley: Yes. You’re funny. You’re just describing me, ’cause I literally have been building a vegetable garden for the last few months.

 

And it is true, ’cause we are literally… I use this example with clients all the time. Like y- uh, we have two… We actually have multiple beds. But if I just chose not to water one of them, those plants would die. Mm-hmm. The ones who live are the ones that I’m watering, that I’m putting my attention on- Yeah

 

and I’m caring for them. So I think that that’s so true. Okay, so let’s talk about strategy here. Um, someone has health anxiety, but they have their yearly physical coming up, or they have a, a f- an actual, you know, illness or condition or something going on in the background where they do need to go to doctors.

 

How would you encourage them to navigate that process from start to finish, all the way through to going to the doctor? How do you con- how do you, like, talk to the doctor? How do you manage the anxiety of tests? Like, do you wanna sort of walk us through that process? 

 

Ken: Yeah. So in this book, I have three chapters dedicated to…

 

and, I mean, it covers all of that So, but briefly, it’s hard to cover this briefly. 

 

Kimberley: I 

 

Ken: understand. You know, there’s a reason why people avoid the doctors. It’s a, I call it a, a love-hate relationship because you wanna get the reassurance from the doctor, but going to the doctor is very triggering, just even walking into the office because you know the doctor is gonna say something vague that you’re gonna then misinterpret.

 

‘Cause the doctor’s not gonna give you, or rarely is gonna give you conclusive evidence that you’re perfectly fine and safe. They’re gonna say, “Right now it doesn’t appear to be you have cancer.” But in your mind you’re gonna interpret that, “It doesn’t appear to be cancer. Well, does that mean it could be cancer?”

 

Or the doctor might say something like, “You know what? You’re fine now. You’re all right. Why don’t you come back in six months?” And you might think, “Well, why do I have to come back in six months if everything’s fine?” So your anxiety’s always gonna flip it around. 

 

Kimberley: Mm-hmm. 

 

Ken: So you always have to be aware. So in the book I talk about, well, how to prepare for these comments the doctor’s gonna make.

 

How are you gonna prepare for when the doctor says, “Well, it doesn’t seem to be anything, but why don’t we do a CT scan just to make sure?” So now you’ve gotta go for a CT scan, which scares the hell out of you. So oftentimes people will just avoid going to the doctor because they don’t wanna deal with it, and then the longer they avoid going, the more they start to think, “Well, I haven’t been to the doctor in three years.

 

Maybe something is wrong.” 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: You can’t avoid, and you have to go to the doctor. You gotta go to your annual physicals. You gotta do all that stuff. And, and you also have to learn the strategy of how to approach these visits without freaking out- About anything the doctor might say or might recommend.

 

Kimberley: Yes, and I always say to clients, but you can actually give me your feedback on this. 

 

Ken: Yeah. 

 

Kimberley: I always say to clients, you are to go and just answer the doctor’s questions. Don’t come at them with what you think it might be. Like, I have so many clients who come in and they’ll say, “I have had headaches and I’ve also had a lot of anxiety lately, and I read online that it could be…”

 

Now you’re kind of dangling in front of the doctor all of these things, and legally he can’t ignore you, right? He’s on the hook now legally. So it- I always say just go in and let the doctor do their job of asking the questions instead of you feeding him your own doctor strategy. 

 

Ken: Yeah, I can see why you would say that.

 

I actually advise people to share their worry. So if you’re worried about brain cancer, say, “I’m worried about brain cancer,” because the doctor doesn’t know what you’re worried about unless you tell them, and they might be looking at it something different, and they’re not even aware that you’re worried about brain cancer, so they can address that.

 

So I usually tell people to share what you’re worried about because then the doctor can address that worry. Um, I, I also tell people don’t ask a lot of questions- 

 

Kimberley: Yes … 

 

Ken: because the doctor doesn’t have all the answers to everything, you know? 

 

Kimberley: And- But that makes them so upset because they want the answers.

 

They want certainty. 

 

Ken: Right. So don’t ask a lot of questions, you know. Don’t ask about side effects to medicine, and don’t look up side effects to medicines, you know. But yeah, it’s challenging. I usually recommend making sure that you actually have a primary care doctor and getting to know that person and making sure that person is patient and understands a little bit about health anxiety and, um…

 

But too often people don’t establish relationships with their doctor. They’re just going to urgent cares and- 

 

Kimberley: Yeah … 

 

Ken: so it is really important that you actually have a good relationship with a doctor that you, uh, that you trust who has good, good bedside manner. 

 

Kimberley: Yeah Can you share a little bit about your advice to tell them about your worry?

 

Um, so let’s play it out. So let’s say you were afraid of a brain tumor- 

 

Ken: Yeah … 

 

Kimberley: and you were going in for headaches. 

 

Ken: Yeah. 

 

Kimberley: To what degree would that be giving the doctor just giving you reassurance? Like, can you help someone understand who’s listening, you know, to what degree do you share your fear, and when does that cross over into you just needing reassurance that you’re not having a brain tumor?

 

Ken: So I think sometimes therapists will say reassurance is not good, but normal people want reassurance. When I say normal people, I mean people without health anxiety. They wanna be reassured that they’re fine, right? So going into the doctor because you’re worried about something, whether you have health anxiety or not, and the doctor’s saying, “No, you’re okay,” that’s fine.

 

The problem with reassurance is if it’s a compulsion. Like, you have to d- call the doctor again, you have to send an email, and you need reassurance from your spouse. That’s the problem with reassurance. Thank you. If you need reassurance to, to find out that you’re, you’re okay, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that.

 

Kimberley: So I think what you’re really saying to the listeners is getting assurance is fine, but reassurance is where we draw the line or where you wanna be careful if you’re finding you’re asking the same question more than once, or you’re asking the same question d- in a sneaky, different way, or even… I- a lot of times, I find if, let’s say, you’re going for assurance, like, “I’m afraid of this,” you know, and h- the doctor says, “No, it…

 

You know, your headaches are normal,” and whatever. But then sometimes we might re-ask a question or even make a statement and be looking at the doctor to try and see their facial expression to see if they’re anxious. Like, I think that there is sometimes a physical checking we do of, like, do they… It’s sort of like when you’re on the airplane, you know how they say, like- Mm-hmm

 

“If you look at the flight attendants and they’re not scared, you’re, you’re probably fine”? Mm-hmm. Like, I think what we do that as well with doctors. We look at them to see if they’re scared. 

 

Ken: Very much, and sometimes maybe they are a little concerned, but that doesn’t mean their intuition is correct either.

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: You know, I’ve had doctors like, “Yeah, this is concerning. We should check it,” and then turns out to be nothing. 

 

Kimberley: Yes. 

 

Ken: But yeah, there’s a difference between assurance and reassurance, and even asking again, like, the doctor says, “Yes, you’re fine,” and but, but, but before you leave, you’re like, “So I’m okay?” And the doctor says, “You’re okay.”

 

“Okay, fine.” Right? So you can leave it at that. But you can get rid of that 

 

Kimberley: Right. One last question before you tell us more about your book is, um, okay, so if somebody does… Let’s just talk about pain, ’cause I think this is important. Some people do have conditions or symptoms that are painful. Headaches.

 

Like, I just went through a, like a wild vertigo thing that I’d never experienced. Like, that sucked. Like, that was scary. Mm-hmm. It was difficult. And I have all the skills, so I’m so grateful that I have already been trained to handle that whoosh of, like, complete craziness. Yeah. But for those who are experiencing physical pain in relation to their, you know, we talked about the somatic symptom part, what skill would you give them to help manage the physiological discomfort they feel?

 

We’ve got- Mm … we’ve talked about not engaging in the anxiety, but what about managing the pain? 

 

Ken: Yeah. Good question. So in my book, I mentioned that I have QR codes, and one of the QR codes is a group I conducted with health anxiety clients, and I had a guest speaker, a guest on the show, who was, um, Dr. David Schechter, and he wrote a book called Think Away Your Pain.

 

And it was all about, um, having pain that’s manifested through the brain. It’s not … There’s no physical structure that’s broken or damaged that’s causing the pain. The pain is being caused by the brain. And so in the book, um, you can watch that, that video, but a lot of pain comes from the brain. As an example, phantom limb pain.

 

Mm. A limb where, and you’re in war, and let’s say your arm is blown off and you have no arm from your elbow down, but you can feel the pain in your hand even though there’s no hand there. 

 

Kimberley: Mm-hmm. 

 

Ken: But you can feel the pain in your hand because it’s not coming from your hand, it’s coming from your brain. 

 

Kimberley: Mm.

 

Ken: There’s another video that I have in my book that is, uh, it’s, it’s like a rubber hand experiment, where the experimenter trains the person to feel sensations in a rubber hand. So they’re actually feeling sensations in the rubber hand that, because their eyes are looking at the rubber hand. It’s crazy.

 

But it’s just another example of how pain sometimes is n- is actually amplified through your brain and not anything physical. But then again, you have to rule out the physical first. So in all of these things we’re talking about, you really have to rule out anything medical. So whether it’s a neurological thing or a pain thing, we gotta rule out the medical first.

 

If there’s nothing medically wrong, then we have to start thinking that, “All right. Maybe this is a mental disorder that I am creating or I’m amplifying because I’m so anxious and preoccupied.” 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. It’s sort of cool, isn’t it? That, you know, I, I think it’s kind of cool that we have the science and those types of experiments that can confirm that.

 

Yeah. Before you tell us about where people can get ahold of you, um, is there anything that we haven’t mentioned today that you feel would be absolute crucial for listeners to understand, specifically if they are having somatic symptoms that haven’t been given any medical reason, and they have a lot of health anxiety or illness anxiety about that?

 

Ken: Get this book. You know, it’s complicated. It’s not easy, but I will say it’s treatable. I started doing health anxiety groups for my clients before COVID. So once a month, we would get online, people from all over the US and different parts of the world, and when the group started, everyone was a mess.

 

Everyone was terrified. And now, they’re… I still have some people that are still part of it. They’re like, they’re good. Like, this is a treatable disorder. 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: It’s treatable, but you have to get the right kind of treatment. If you’re not working with someone who specializes in anxiety and OCD, who has experience with this, it’s not gonna work.

 

Yeah. You can’t go to a generalist and expect to get better. You have to see someone who knows how to treat this, right? So probably the best thing to do is make sure that whoever therapist you’re seeing, go to their website and see, do I- do they only treat anxiety and OCD, or do they treat everything in the- under the sun?

 

Kimberley: Yep. Yeah. Right? Amazing. Yeah. Tell us about your book. 

 

Ken: Oh my goodness, this has been a labor of love. Yeah, this was probably two or three years in the making, The Health Anxiety Handbook and Video Toolkit. You know, when I write a book, it’s big. It’s not just a book. It’s basically a program because I have all these QR codes that go through the book, um, interviews with doctors, interviews with former health anxiety sufferers.

 

Um, in fact, in the first chapter, you’ll see these four QR codes, and they link to videos with four different people with different kinds of health anxiety. And it’s so that you can understand, oh, this is what health anxiety is, but then each video ends with them talking about how they’re doing now and, and that they did get better.

 

So one person had worries about cancer, another person had worries about ALS and MS, another person had fears of heart attacks. And you just put your phone over it, and these videos, these QR codes, these people, you kind of follow them through the book. And as I talk about different treatment strategies, you can watch a video of them talking about this treatment strategy.

 

Or I’ll interview doctors, and the doctors will talk about, from their perspective, how they work with people with health anxiety and, and how the body is noisy. Mm-hmm. Um, one of the people I interview is an ER doctor. He actually oversees, like, 40 ERs here in Southern California. And, um, he talks about every day, people are coming into the ER with things that they think are medical, but they’re actually being caused by their brain, their mind.

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: Right? Yeah. So it’s a step-by-step Self-paced. You can just go along with it. It, it’s, um… No, let’s start. Let me do that again. It’s a, the book is step by step. You learn about what health anxiety is. You learn about what the strategy of anxiety is. In other words, anxiety has a strategy. It’s trying to keep you miserable.

 

You have to understand how anxiety is doing that, and then I give you a strategy of how to overcome it. Once you learn that strategy, now you have to learn, “Okay, how do I implement this strategy?” And then once you learn that, it’s like, “Okay, now I need to learn how do I deal with doctors?” Mm. “How do I make sure that I get to the doctor?”

 

‘Cause you wanna make sure that you’re not only protecting yourself from fatal diseases, but you’re trying to protect yourself health anxiety too. You’re trying to find a balance. 

 

Kimberley: Mm-hmm. 

 

Ken: So it’s all in the book. It’s fantastic. Highly recommend it. You can go to kengoodmantherapy.com to learn more about it.

 

You can also go to Amazon. It’s available on Amazon. And, um, yeah, I… It’s, um… No, cut that part out. 

 

Kimberley: That’s 

 

Ken: good. 

 

Kimberley: Congratulations. This is so exciting. Yeah. I so celebrate anyone who writes a book. So it sounds like it’s amazing. I cannot wait to get my hands on it, so thank you. 

 

Ken: Yeah, and it’s, you know, a lot of…

 

By the way, can I… Sorry to interrupt you. By the way, a lot of people are fearful of jumping into a self-help book, like on health anxiety, because it’s all about uncertainty. Like, “What am I gonna read? Am I gonna read about other people’s-” 

 

Kimberley: Mm … “

 

Ken: fears and then take them on my own?” No. I try to keep the book light.

 

There’s humor in it. There’s a lot of anecdotes and metaphors, and you will not do that. That will not happen. You’ll come away feeling empowered and not so worried about your thoughts, because the whole idea is to stop worrying and start living. 

 

Kimberley: Yeah. 

 

Ken: That’s the 

 

Kimberley: whole thing. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here.

 

It’s been such- Mm-hmm … a pleasure to chat with you, and I’m really, really helpful, so thank you. 

 

Ken: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

 

Kimberley: Please note that 

 

this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental healthcare. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.